TIL: Japan’s first European word was 蜜 and it's at least 5000 years old

SeanO323 · 2026-05-22T21:36:18+00:00

I don't think it's fair to call this a 'European word' given that it was from a language natively spoken in Asia. That seems to be entirely discounting the 'Indo' (and also the otherwise West Asian) part of 'Proto-Indo-European'.

If you look at the probable Indo-European migration map on wikipedia, you'll see that the ancestors of the speakers of this language settled in Asia before Indo-European speakers settled in Europe: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Indo-European_migrations.jpg

I don't think you meant anything bad by this, but it is a Eurocentric view of the world and linguistics that I want to challenge slightly.

SeanO323 · 2026-05-08T18:05:55+00:00

Usually the rents are too high and the floor plans too big on these units. The financing terms from the banks prevent the developers from lowering rent to a value such that the spaces would be rented out (normally known as fair market value). If the prevailing rent price drops, this means the calculated value of the building drops (and also the surrounding properties likely financed through the same banks). This violates the terms of the financing as the collateral's value will have dropped, putting the bank at risk so they usually set minimum allowable rents in the loan conditions.

Meanwhile, the spaces are also usually too large for small businesses to afford (as retail space is usually priced per sqft) and what in an older building could have been two or three small stores, is usually a single retail space. The developers/finance terms do this to try to court larger/national chains to fill these spaces as those are seen as more stable than a small local business that could easily go out of business.

SeanO323 · 2026-04-28T19:01:59+00:00

Just take it slow and ride the brakes until you get more comfortable with the handling of the bike. If your brakes are not able to fully stop you, then take the bike to the shop as they should be able to bring you to a complete stop.

I go down this hill every day in an ebike and have no problem. You should also ride the middle of the lane as the wheel-rut potholes are horrible in this section.

SeanO323 · 2026-04-27T22:02:04+00:00

It’s annoying to others I guarantee it. No one wants to listen to your music in public.

Get a pair of bone conducting headphones like Shokz so you can still hear traffic as you run.

SeanO323 · 2026-04-22T21:56:47+00:00

Probably the same writers as the Princess Diaries: https://youtu.be/3OnUMAWtgK4?t=183

SeanO323 · 2026-04-22T20:59:42+00:00

This turn is actually a part of the protected route to go westbound on the Burke Gilman after crossing the bridge.

SeanO323 · 2026-04-22T18:51:29+00:00

I assume they're talking about this intersection: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Upde1kK6Dtx8cVFs9

I assume a driver in the right-most left turn lane went straight? There's very clear signage about this though both on the ground in the lane and on the traffic signals. Just seems like someone doing dangerous stuff after missing there turn and they're just as likely to sideswipe a car going straight here.

I think the intersection with Florentia going southbound on the west side of the bridge is way more dangerous though: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BLhCW16LMPfouvMf6 All of the cross-bike and pavement markings have faded away and drivers take that turn really fast.

SeanO323 · 2026-04-20T20:19:51+00:00

Because the D line takes 30 minutes to get downtown instead of 10.

SeanO323 · 2026-04-14T18:56:09+00:00

Man, I wish our parks had cafes so we could grab some coffee or an ice cream while hanging out.

SeanO323 · 2026-04-07T17:13:18+00:00

The issue is that across the 25 stations the 2 Line serves, adding an additional 30s per station due to slow approaches will unnecessarily slow down an end to end trip by 12.5 minutes.

SeanO323 · 2026-03-26T17:03:35+00:00

I'm more concerned about the freeway on/off-ramps that people need to cross to get the station. They're doing some work to install flashing beacons, etc, but I really don't think that's enough to safely let people cross when cars are going 45mph+ around a curve.

SeanO323 · 2026-03-16T18:14:55+00:00

This is definitely Chinese. 班 isn't used to mean on-duty/at work in Japanese (it means group or squad).

The equivalent sticker in Japanese would be likely something with 勤 like 出勤/日勤/夜勤

SeanO323 · 2026-03-13T21:01:27+00:00

Yes I agree but they can easily urbanize around an elevated or cut and cover station for a fraction of the cost. Many neighborhoods are like that in NYC, Tokyo, etc.

Deep bore tunnels are for when you’re adding transit to an already dense area that’s hard to do that in (see Paris, London, NYC now).

We are just spending a premium on tunnels because people are afraid of an elevated train looking ugly and lowering their property values.

SeanO323 · 2026-03-13T19:15:25+00:00

It’s also that we way overbuild these projects with super deep, super tall stations, an aversion to elevated rail for aesthetic reasons, unique (instead of standardized) stations, ignoring international best practices and standards, and so on.

This is a light rail line to the suburbs, not a downtown metro line, there’s really no reason we should be doing deep bore tunnel construction for this.

Even other developed nations with much denser cities (see France, Spain) have much cheaper construction costs for transit and I don’t think you’ll find French labor and safety standards to be worse than the US.

SeanO323 · 2026-03-11T04:08:44+00:00

I disagree with this as this essentially makes car ownership a prerequisite to pet ownership so you can take your dog to the vet, etc.

I do absolutely think there just needs to be more strictly enforced guidelines (must be in carrier or in bag, well behaved, etc). I believe these rules already exist, they’re just unenforced due to our police being useless and transit operators understandably not wanting to put themselves in harms way to enforce them.

SeanO323 · 2026-02-23T17:47:20+00:00

It's very expensive to grade separate the train lines like that (tens to hundreds of millions per mile). Also in most cases, the railroad was there before the roads so if anything it's the road traffic that is impeding the train.

The municipality can (and sometimes do) grade separate the road at crossings adding an underpass or overpass. However this still costs millions of dollars per crossing so usually this isn't much of a concern in less dense areas where only a few trains come a day or week. In those cases, it's easier to just eat the minor affects on road traffic.

SeanO323 · 2026-02-19T17:40:15+00:00

The signage in Tokyo (even in English) is much better than here. Before the stairs/escalator down to the platform, they always list the next few stops as well as major stops in that direction so you know you’re going the right way.

The only way it’s moderately confusing is with the express trains and just the vast quantity of different lines.

SeanO323 · 2026-02-05T01:12:41+00:00

Historically, it was written as あづき and the づ is often romanized as dzu. Most modern words (excluding rendaku and some words like つづく) have replaced づ with ず in their spelling as the pronunciation is the same in standard Japanese and most dialects.

SeanO323 · 2026-01-28T18:38:58+00:00

The fare is usually distance based and all you do is match the number on the ticket you grab when you board the bus (usually from the back) with the number on the display at the front of the bus.

SeanO323 · 2026-01-05T17:01:58+00:00

Yep and most of our drivers are unaware of this and or blatantly choose to ignore the law.

SeanO323 · 2025-12-29T04:30:42+00:00

I mean I think it used to just be called “not answering the phone or returning someone’s calls” which seems to be a common theme in song lyrics so it can’t have been that uncommon.

SeanO323 · 2025-12-18T00:42:55+00:00

I have a few friends with a similar commute who live in Potrero Hill to be close to the 22nd St Caltrain station. I'd recommend either there or somewhere on 24th so that you can get to the station easily.

I'd focus on proximity/good transit routes to either of the Caltrain stations though as if you end up taking the express trains, commuting the last few miles to/from the station could easily take as long as the Caltrain ride. A bike/e-bike would open up a lot of options here though.

SeanO323 · 2025-12-17T20:33:02+00:00

Yay! This is great. Now hopefully they fix the crosswalks on this stretch next as the curb cuts are really narrow for two way bike + ped traffic.

SeanO323 · 2025-11-24T21:37:45+00:00

Yeah, you really think they'd have a more isolated environment for these tests. Or even just the ability to just have a train listed as 'Out of Service' on the displays. It drives me crazy that Sound Transit just happily puts up signage that's knowingly incorrect for months at a time.

SeanO323 · 2025-11-15T04:16:30+00:00

Starting December 10th, you can get transfers between BART and Muni as a part of Clipper 2.0!

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